The Making of ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’

Left to right, Mira Nair, Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson and Mohsin Hamid at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, April 22.

In “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” India-born director Mira Nair exposes all sides of the American Dream, from its star-spangled face to its sinister underbelly.

Adapted from Mohsin Hamid’s acclaimed 2007 novel, the film, which hits U.S. theaters Friday, is told largely via flashback in a gritty, Lahore University teahouse. Here, a seemingly radical Pakistani professor, Changez (Riz Ahmed), reveals his story to a shadowy American journalist, Bobby (Liev Schreiber.)

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Changez, a Princeton University graduate, chased a fortune on Wall Street and fell in love with an artist called Erica (Kate Hudson), but his life changes dramatically following the events of 9/11.

“Sadly, it’s a timely film… in the 12 years since the attacks of September 11, I haven’t seen a glimmer of peace,” Ms. Nair said, adding that the recent bombings at the Boston Marathon serve as a tragic reminder.

“The quickness to hold an entire community responsible for the acts of a few individuals is an overt response,” said the 55-year-old director who has considered New York home for nearly half her life. “America has prided itself on not looking like a single person. If we start making these divisions now, we’ll never hear from the other side.”

Mr. Ahmed, a British-Pakistani actor who has starred in several independent films and, most notably, director Michael Winterbottom’s 2011 drama, “Trishna,” auditioned for the part of Changez nearly four times before he was cast.

Mr. Ahmed said the film “nearly fell apart” because of problems with his American visa. “They needed to check my name against a database of international terrorists—it’s a blanket security measure that American authorities impose on most young, Muslim males—and we were told that could take up to nine months,” he said.

For Mr. Ahmed’s co-star, Ms. Hudson, taking on Erica’s role was a “no-brainer,” inextricably linked to her admiration of Ms. Nair. “She felt familiar,” said Ms. Hudson of her director. “When we first met, I was eight months pregnant with my son and I felt like I was meeting a soul-mate. I read the script two times in a row because it was so rich and I knew only Mira could tackle this story,” she said.

Kiefer Sutherland, who plays Changez’s opportunistic boss, Jim, said the film provided a chance to re-examine his personal reaction to 9/11. “After the attacks on the Twin Towers, I didn’t spend much time thinking about the profound ripple effect it had on people of a different faith,” he said. “I consider myself to be a relatively progressive person but I was just so angry after 9/11 that like many people, the better part of me didn’t surface right away.”

The film faced a rocky road in terms of financing, largely attributed to its politically-charged content. “It was dropped about three times,” Ms. Nair said. Potential producers urged her to strip the title of the word “fundamentalist,” and stressed that a Muslim protagonist was only worth a $2 million budget (hardly enough for a film that spanned the globe, with locations including Istanbul and New Delhi) before she got full support from the Doha Film Institute in Qatar.

“Every time someone backed out, I would blast ‘Mori Araj Suno’ (Hear Me Out, Oh Lord) — one of the songs from the film — to keep me going,” said Ms. Nair, adding that the film’s soundtrack, featuring a blend of qawwalis, or devotional Sufi music, tried to capture the sounds emerging from present-day Pakistan.

“Often, it’s the music that makes the scenes happen,” she said. Ms. Nair added that she bought the rights to the opening track “Kangana” (Bracelet) by Karachi-based singers Fareed Ayaz and Abu Mohammed years ago. “Music is my breathing universe… a lot of times, I’ll make a movie because of a piece of music,” she said.

A highlight for Ms. Nair was bagging the Centenary Award at the International Film Festival of India in December (the film’s official release date in India is May 10.) “I’m so excited to be one of the first Indian directors to make a Pakistani film and bring it to America,” she said. “And the fact that it’s embraced by my country as a piece of work that crosses borders makes me so proud of India.”

Aarti Virani is an arts, culture & entertainment writer, covering the New York metropolitan area. You can follow her on Twitter @aartivirani.

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